﻿This bill tells us that the government does not want women to be equal. You don't have to
dig around and string an argument together based on things people have said outside the chamber to
make that very clear; it is clear from the words themselves. This bill is the government saying
that it is implementing the recommendations of one of the most significant reports that this
parliament has seen for a long time. It was a wide-ranging report into sexual harassment
and mistreatment at work, led by Professor Kate Jenkins—and whose work on behalf of the Greens
I want to join with others in applauding. That report said to us very clearly that what we needed
to do was to put into law a basic principle that the legislation should aim for equality for women.
Instead, the government isn't even prepared to do that. The government comes up with a bill that
says, 'Well, we'll aim for equality of opportunity as far as is practicable.' So, in other words,
the government is bringing in legislation that says women will continue to remain unequal.
But they're only even bringing this legislation before the parliament because they have been
dragged kicking and screaming by the women of Australia to act and to implement the report.
Tens of thousands of women marched around Australia in response to and in support
of the brave statements from people like Brittany Higgins, who stood up and showed enormous courage
to hold systems and their perpetrators to account. There was widespread support for women
finally standing up and lifting the lid on the bad behaviour of men, including in this
parliament. I was very proud to join and, together with many of my Greens colleagues,
lend my support to those women when they came up here. But they never should have had to do it. The
change that we need, in our laws but also our behaviours, is change that men need to
make. It's change that men need to make about the way they act, but also change that men need
to make to the laws of this country. We had the Respect@Work report sit with
the then Attorney-General, Christian Porter, for over a year before even a press release
was issued. Then, when the government bring a bill to this parliament it fails to do
what they have been asked to do, not only by the Respect@Work report but by the tens of thousands
of women across Australia who have been marching and demanding change. It's not only the failure to
legislate for equality in this bill that needs to be condemned. It's also the failure to do
the single central thing that the report said needed to happen: to change the law to require
employers to make sure their workplaces are safe. That is the thing that needed to happen.
It happens in workplace health and safety, and there are very simple reasons for that.
It is often very difficult to find that someone has committed an offence, discriminated against
or harassed someone or made a workplace unsafe, because it takes a lot of courage to speak up.
We changed the law with respect to health and safety to make sure that employers have a
positive obligation to create a safe workplace. That's what Professor Jenkins wanted us to do
in the law here regarding discrimination. It is the right move, and the government won't do it.
The government will not make employers ensure their workplaces are safe.
The tragedy is, when these bills were going through the inquiry stage,
everyone across the political spectrum and across the worker-employer divide supported
changing the law to make sure that workplaces were safe. It was something that had widespread support
because it would have made a huge difference, it would have shifted the culture in this
country and it would have helped ensure that everyone could go to work and know that their
workplace would be free from harassment and violence. But the government has refused to
do that. These changes, changes to behaviour and the law, should have been implemented
by men and they haven't. Today, we continue to see the refusal of this government to do the things
that are necessary to make sure that every woman everywhere knows their workplace will be safe.
There are many other things that should have been implemented in this bill and are not, including 10
days' family and domestic violence leave. I won't go through all of those amendments, because the
government has dragged the chain for so long and has only given us very limited time to deal with
this. Instead, I want to acknowledge the work of our leader in the Senate, Senator Larissa Waters,
who has led the charge on behalf of the Greens both in parliament and outside to ensure that
the amazing work of the Respect@Work report is implemented and turned into law. I want to note
that we all support the amendments that the Greens moved in the Senate, where we worked cooperatively
with Labor, and are reflected in the amendments that are being moved in the House here by the
opposition. They got significant support in the Senate and they should get support here as well.
What I fear, and what we fear, is that once the government have passed this legislation
they will show no appetite to come back and close other loopholes and improve the law in
the way the Respect@Work report asks us to. We will support these amendments that we
worked on together in the Senate, and I commend my colleague for moving them.
With that, given the short period of time that the government has allowed
for such an important debate, I support the amendments. Some of the elements of the bill
do go some way towards implementing the Respect@Work report, so we will be supporting
that, but this bill demonstrates that this government is anti-women. It does not want
equality for women, and so, on behalf of the Greens and on behalf of all of our
senators, I pledge we will keep fighting to ensure that the voices of those who have marched
on this place and who continue to burn with anger will be heard until the law is changed.